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Upcrate Monthly Mystery Art Supplies Box Review
Use code Carter15 to get 15% off your first order.
Read the full article at:
https://www.carterart.art/article/upcrate-monthly-mystery-art-supplies-box-review
Read about gouache:
https://www.carterart.art/article/is-gouache-more-like-watercolour-or-acrylics
Social Media Links:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamescarter.art/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JamesCarter.Art
Website: https://www.jamescarterart.com/
James Carter Art
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0:00
Hello everyone and welcome to my review video about Upgr8. Upgr8 are a monthly subscription
0:05
service company that send out a box of art supplies to you every month for a very reasonable
0:11
price. I really liked this brand and everything they stood for, building up artist reputations
0:16
and allowing artists to experiment and trial new media and mediums. I found it a little
0:23
bit hard to open the box because it was very well secured which I actually really liked
0:28
Upon opening the box however I discovered that the materials themselves were in a slightly
0:33
damaged green wrapper which was a little bit unfortunate but all the materials were still
0:41
in great contact and still super high quality. So I've written an entire article about Upgr8
0:48
and the company, everything they do and what they offer. I've also got a code for you to
0:53
use which is James15 where you can get 15% off your first monthly subscription of their
0:59
art box supplies. So within the box we received a magazine and a few other things which I'll
1:05
get to a little later but for now let's have a look at the items themselves. We received
1:10
a really nice fineliner which I believe is 0.1 or 0.2 and that one is really, really
1:18
nice. They all feel very high quality. We also received a paintbrush which is really
1:24
nice and I half expected some of the bristles to fall out but it had a really nice point
1:30
to it and a really nice edge. So that was really, really nice. I half expected some
1:35
of these to be a little crankled up but I also received some gouache paint which is
1:40
something that I never have used before and I thought it would be a great opportunity
1:44
to try out gouache paint. We received about four different gouache paints. I was surprised
1:51
we didn't receive any black but that was easy enough to make use for. We received blue
1:56
skin, white and red which could also be magenta but it depends. And then we also received
2:05
this glue stick which was one of the hardest things I've ever had to open and even my knife
2:11
struggled with it a little bit. But I was surprised with the glue stick because I didn't
2:16
quite know what it was for but I eventually found that I'd missed out one of the art supplies
2:20
which is transfer foil. Which I don't actually use the glue stick or transfer foil in this
2:26
video because I just didn't think that it would... I didn't get around to using it basically
2:33
But yeah, after managing to finally open the glue stick packet I realised that the glue
2:39
stick itself had even more plastic around the top of it which was a little bit annoying
2:46
But yes, I really enjoy Upcrate and everything they do and the subscription services is actually
2:52
reasonably reasonably priced so if you're interested in being able to trial new media
2:59
every month I would actually suggest maybe trying them out a little bit and you can also
3:04
use the code to get 15% off to try them. So once we finally got all of that plastic
3:10
off of the glue stick it was just a squeezy glue tube thing. That was it. But yeah. I
3:19
also decided that I'd try and open the packet how it was meant to be designed because I
3:24
was a little bit disappointed that the packaging had been damaged slightly but I mean it wasn't..
3:30
I'm sure it wasn't any fault of Upcrate themselves and I'm sure not every packet comes like this
3:36
but from what you can see now that's how it would have been opened which would have been
3:40
lovely because for an art supplies delivery company I truly believe that the experience
3:47
of opening up the package for the first time is a massive part of it all and we also received
3:54
this magazine which I could quite happily sit down and flip through the magazine for
3:59
a while and also you can see the monthly battle thing is a monthly thing that Upcrate
4:06
do where you can create a piece of art using the materials they've given you from that
4:13
month inspired by the topic they gave you. So this month's topic was mysterious mind
4:18
and I'll be creating a piece of artwork using the materials a little later on which I think
4:24
you'd really enjoy and so that you can actually enter with a hashtag on Instagram and you
4:30
can also win prizes from that as well. We also received this little letter which I was..
4:36
I didn't quite expect anything like this and all that came within it was a whole load of
4:42
stickers. I'm not entirely sure what the stickers are used for, they might just be something
4:48
fun to mess around with or just that little extra thing that Upcrate like to offer you
4:52
but as you can also see in the box we also received that transfer foil which at first
4:58
I wasn't quite entirely too sure what it was, what to do with it or how to use it because
5:01
I haven't used it before but within the magazine themselves they actually talk about how to
5:07
use it, what you can do with it and all the little bits and bobs you can create with it
5:12
It was a little hard to get out of the box. So yeah that's the transfer foil which if
5:18
you're unfamiliar with how to use transfer foil, there's loads of stuff on YouTube but
5:23
all you do is you put a little bit of glue down and you rub it and it transfers over
5:29
We also received three sheets of paper which I was really happy with. Unfortunately the
5:33
corners were ever so slightly damaged but nothing significant whatsoever, it was just
5:38
noticeable to me. They are very, very high quality sheets of paper and the tooth on them
5:44
is absolutely lovely which will also hold the gouache paint really, really well. We
5:50
also received this which I'm not entirely too sure what it was, I think it was just
5:55
a sheet to show the Instagram page of the Art Fusion company. So let's just pack all
6:00
that up and then these are the materials I'm going to be using which was just the gouache
6:04
paint and the pen. I really, really wanted to use the pen because I do have some experience
6:09
with fineliners and penmanship and I've also used dip pens and everything like that. So
6:15
I thought this would be a really nice experience to try and use gouache paint with the pen
6:20
I'm very confident with using a pen these days but gouache paint is something I've not
6:25
tried before so I thought it would be absolutely really fun to try, see what it was like really
6:33
And I know gouache paint is halfway between acrylic and watercolour so it's not fully
6:39
opaque but it's not fully transparent. I've written an entire article on gouache paint
6:44
which I'll put a link to in the description as well for you which you might find a little interesting. So this was inspired by that, by the little monthly challenge of Mysterious
6:55
Mind. Unfortunately I didn't have any ideas about it or anything and this is actually
7:00
a piece of artwork that I've been wanting to do for a little while and this was just a great excuse for me to just do it with. Unfortunately it's not my own original artwork
7:10
it is me drawing this now but the artwork itself was actually part of an article from
7:16
the New York Times. Unfortunately I don't know who the original artist was. If you do
7:20
know them I will give them full credit because this is not my original artwork, I just was
7:25
inspired by it and really loved everything they did with it. So using the pen I found
7:31
it really really nice, it has one of the best grips I've found. It does look a little cheap
7:37
on first hand but almost the moment you pick it up you can just feel the high quality of
7:44
the nib and the holding and the grip. It is really really nice to have this lovely flat
7:50
edge for you to be able to use and I don't know quite what it is but it just feels like
7:56
absolutely amazing. As a fineliner this might be my new favourite fineliner. But yeah, from
8:02
there I decided to learn how to use the gouache paint which I just on the side I just squeezed
8:09
out all the paints, mixed them to make some purple and then I just painted away. I did
8:15
find that the brush was really really nice and none of the bristles fell out which I
8:22
was half expecting a bristle or two to fall out as for some of the cheaper paintbrushes
8:28
I've bought in the past but this one stood up really well and all the gouache paint worked
8:34
really well I think. I mean I've not used it before so I think that this was a really
8:39
good experience to trial it and that's what I love so much about this upgrade company
8:45
is that they allow you to trial out new art media materials and medium every month whereas
8:52
usually when I first started drawing painting I was very much like this is what I want to
8:56
try I'm going to stick within this limit but with this company I think it's really really
9:00
nice to be able to try things that they give you rather than you going I'm going to try
9:07
this I'll try that out next month you know but with this company it's really nice because
9:12
you don't know what you're going to expect every month they change the what's included
9:16
within the packaging and they also the monthly challenge also changes as well but I found
9:23
that using the paints themselves was really nice you know you could instantly tell they
9:28
were really high quality and then after putting them down and letting it dry for a few minutes
9:34
I decided to test out the pen again by going over the paints with it because I thought
9:39
oh maybe it might not might not work as well but surprisingly it worked perfectly also
9:45
I don't know if I mentioned but I'm also every bit of material in here I'm using is from
9:51
the upgrade and it's even the paper as well I found that was really really nice quality
9:57
as I said the corners were ever so slightly damaged but nothing too noticeable but the
10:04
tooth on the paper and the quality of it it's nice thick paper so it holds itself in
10:09
a good battle of the water for the gouache paint but yeah I do hope you enjoyed this
10:16
review and if you want to you can read the full entire article that I've written on everything
10:21
to do with upgrade everything good everything bad everything that you could ask for from
10:26
an upgrade review and I'll leave a link to that in the description below thank you very
10:29
much for watching I'll see you next time. Go to Beadaholique.com for all of your beading supply needs
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